The European Defense Tech Hackathon took place in the Netherlands for the first time — an important step in expanding our presence across Europe.

More than 200 builders, engineers, and industry experts came together for 72 hours of focused, hands-on work. Teams developed and tested prototypes addressing real security challenges, working closely with mentors and partners throughout the weekend.

The combination of technical expertise, operational insight, and strong partner support created an environment focused on practical outcomes. By the end of the hackathon, teams had made tangible progress and advanced their solutions beyond initial concepts.

Kickoff Day

Our hosts at DeltaQuad opened their HQ to engineers, researchers, hackers, and mentors from across Europe. With support from the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine, Nordic Air Defence, and BRAVE1, the participants could fully dedicate their time to building.

This time, we skipped the traditional opening panels and got straight to work.

We focused on hands-on collaboration, rapid prototyping, and equipping teams with the tools they needed to move from concept to battlefield-ready.

Amsterdam proved that Europe’s emerging defense ecosystem is accelerating, with energy raw, urgency real, and collaboration electric.

We’re just getting started.

Hackathon Winners

1st place – Counter-measure drone attack by Tiago Zanaga Da Costa, Vito Vekic, Matteo Mancuso, Giacomo Bais, Eeke Hoogenboom.

2nd place (shared) – OmniSensor: Self-calibrating mesh grid for seismic detection of military ground positions by Marcell, Nathan, Andreas, Edward, Victor.

2nd place (shared) – Global Tracking Features Organization: Low-cost high-speed visual localization by Delft Drone Initiative: Jesse, Matthew, Marco, Yura, Matei.

3rd place – Drone Optimized Guidance (D.O.G.): Winning dogfights with Shahed drones through last-mile automated targeting by Vincent L., Adam, Caspar Lusink, and Tom Rijntjes.

Every project tackled real-world defense challenges, such as counter-drone tactics, situational awareness, and battlefield resilience, using hardware and software.

We don’t have prize money at our hackathons, and that’s on purpose because we want to encourage our teams to focus on building real solutions rather than chasing prize money.

Still, we want to honor the teams that have made the most progress during the hackathon and have the best chances to continue toward deployment. Our evaluation criteria included:

• Are you solving a real problem?
• How effective will the solutions be?
• How original and innovative is your solution?
• How mass-manufacturable will it be?
• How much progress and drive have you demonstrated during the hackathon?

Thanks to our jury, Max Makarchuk, Bram Oostvogel, Kyle Sheehy, Dmytro Frolov, Sander Smeets, Gert-Jan Siepel, and FLASH for lending their time and expertise to review the hackathon submissions!